Fire Crown
by ibuberu
Summary: She escapes into fresh mountains littered with hot springs and the greyest eyes. – StevenFlannery, AU.


**world**- game  
**notes **- written for mochicocoa, and my first breath of AU. **  
**

**Fire Crown**

* * *

Flannery didn't feel like a nineteen-year old, she was too awkward.

* * *

She slowed her breathing and tried not to look too self-conscious, the nervousness prodding the lining of her throat. She stood rigid in front of the small group, scanning the new faces fervently. It was not a big gathering, just a dozen people huddled around the edges of two grand oak tables and comfy swivel chairs. She recognised the Elite Four from their past encounters, but the not the gym leaders. She blinked and swallowed, pausing to realise that she was probably the youngest in the group aside from the two well-behaved twins sitting next to each other at the end of the first table. She fumbled with the pokéball in her hands, holding onto her camerupt for support she franticly tried to harvest.

Her uncertain, unexperienced eyes hovered at the air above everyone's heads, darting this way and that to affirm that there was no escape. Her script faded into smudged words and jumbled sentences in her mind, and she mumbled curses under her breath because she did not know what else to do. It was sad really, because she probably wasn't leaving a good impression on the gym leaders. The brunette and the blue-haired man at the second table whispered to one another, and she could hear phrases like "she's too young" and "how did she even get the job?" prickling her chest.

She tried not to stare at them, shifting her eyes immediately to the man on their left. He had amiable steel eyes and the greyest hair, but his face betrayed no old age – he looked devastatingly young and mature, though still definitely older than herself. The man in the black suit and the grey hair smiled at her softly, the first encouraging and accepting expression since the start of the day. And it had triggered something.

A smile emerged on her face, her muscles relaxing and the knot in her stomach undoing itself automatically. She kept her eyes on him, before opening her mouth to begin the meeting.

* * *

At the end, she shook hands with everyone and mouthed 'thank you' to him in a timid way that was strange of her.

* * *

Flannery never thought herself to amount to much; she operated on anything but a schedule, she was clumsy and brash, and she knew she would never be an intelligent trainer. Yet, she found herself pacing back and forth in the final room of the pokémon league with an escalating sense of entrapment and anticipation frothing under the leather belt of her jeans. It was a daily habit now, and it was not odd for her to feel suffocated under the burning fluorescent lights and the extravagant walls that shut her in. She balanced out the loneliness and limited space with the constant reminder of her title – of something she had clinched so barely and desperately with the help of her grandfather, a former member of the Elite Four.

She stood in the centre of the polished floor, shining unnaturally in a way that showed it did not come off as a battle ring that had been subjected to much torment. The redhead tapped her foot impatiently against the marble lining the ground of her very own room, staring with expectant eyes at doors that hardly (never) opened. Flannery could scarcely remember the last challenger she had had, for he had not been a stellar trainer of sorts, he had managed to get past the previous four members because of his arsenal of revives and full restores. By the time he had reached Flannery, he was reduced to one bottle of full heal and a potion, and he lasted no longer than five minutes under the straying attention of her indifferent camerupt.

Flannery curled a strand of hair with one finger, losing count of the days she had whiled away in the box that celebrated her accomplishment, yet stunted her passion. She had always thought that she would not amount to much; she was not meant to be someone who would be admired and hailed in halls of fame and grandeur, and she burned for the simplest pleasures (running, breathing, just battling without any money or superficial title at stake). Being the Champion, she remained unchanged – meaninglessly passing by each day without voicing her qualms, taking everything as it came, albeit with unsettling side effects. She was constrained in the most frightening way, because who else could (would) find fault in being the champion of Hoenn?

* * *

She fled the cage that day, out into the heated kiss of the sun.

* * *

Flannery led herself to Lavaridge, for someone who hadn't frequented her hometown since she was thirteen was bound to be drawn back to her roots. She revelled in the smell of the volcanic ash mingling in the mountain air and her eyes brightened at the sand baths outside the nostalgic hot springs. The redhead was about to make her way over to the alluring steam of the springs, but then someone grabbed her hand.

She turned to see grey hair and grey eyes, jolting because she hadn't seen the old woman anywhere before.

"You're Flannery! Our champion!" the woman said wryly, giving her an eager smile.

The other townsfolk turned their heads at the exclamation, like a wave crashing down against her body as their eyes registered her presence and what she represented. They faces instantly lighted up, and they soon swarmed around her with adoration and pleas to sign autographs and give battling tips. Flannery tried not to scream or panic under the pressure, but she soon understood an ounce of why she had been bottled up in the pokémon league.

A hand grabbed hers in the disorientating storm of people, fishing her out of the yells and insistences of the crowd that had clustered. It was warm and kind; she could only look up after she had been guided into a small street with fewer people and empty stores. Flannery started to raise her head to thank the person, only to recognise those eyes and that smile in a fraction of a heartbeat.

"It's you," she mumbled, taking in that ashen hair and those metal eyes.

"Yes, are you alright?" the man replied unaffectedly, gaze serious and concerned as he examined her.

Flannery burned, releasing her fingers from his hand before nodding her head. "Thank you– " she started to say, before pausing to recall his name. She bit her lip and placed a hand on her temple in humiliation, combing the bangs out of eyes as she looked sheepishly at him.

* * *

"Steven." He saved her again, grinning at her with those winning eyes.

* * *

She discovered a kindness in Steven that was neither rare nor coveted – but she appreciated and drowned herself in it all the same. He was handsome and charming in countless strategies, she couldn't help but feel like a helpless girl when she was next to him. Flannery shrunk against her instinctive feminism as he walked by her side, exuberating the class and air of a gentleman in his finest moments. She couldn't quite believe that he was a gym leader while she was the champion – it almost seemed as if their roles were reversed.

When Glacia finally found them sitting at the side of the road, the afternoon had coloured the mountains a slate grey and the town sunned itself in an ethereal orange. The two trainers flourished under the setting sun, chatting with few words and instinctive smiles, but the blonde woman found the necessity to pull Flannery by the ear and drag her onto a hovering glalie. Flannery didn't kick or scream or retaliate in a blaze of majestic flames, some portion of her telling her limbs that she couldn't risk the frightening chance of looking ridiculous in front of Steven anymore than she did then.

* * *

She sat on the glalie, trying to look dearly ashamed in an effort to please Glacia; to no avail, a shy and inerasable smile touched her face when he waved one hand in goodbye.

* * *

Flannery snuck back to Lavaridge on the basis of her first escape (and maybe something more), running into Steven's steel-type gym in an attempt to persuade him to hide her from both the hysterical crowd and the Elite Four. The enamouring male didn't concede or reject her request, firmly glued to that white picket fence. But he led her into the mountains to pass the time wisely, through the dim caves that were lined with translucent crystals and rocks as elusive as jewels. He suggested to her to feel the earth and the surfaces of the walls, telling her about its history just by mere touch and inspection alone.

She listened vaguely, the majority of her attention and thoughts converging over how his eyes sparkled when they rested on a special granite, the dashing way he brushed off the dirt from his shoulder and her back. She gulped as she shook her head blindly to a question she did not hear, only to feel her footing abandon her in the cavern they were strolling through. Flannery grabbed his hand on humiliating reflex in order to avoid the sneaky hole yawning in the craggy floor, but not before releasing a weak squeak.

Steven stiffened and held her weight as she leaned against him. And when he didn't shake her hand off, Flannery felt her heart soar to the peak of that very mountain.

* * *

Most of the time, she sneaked back to the League before she was caught in the act of an entrancing escapism.

* * *

But between each rocky gossamer, there loomed the sharp pointedness of Glacia's words and the childish cut that Sid's teasing characterised. Flannery was clinging to the brink of her emotions, dangling off the edge of her tolerance in all the encasement and restrictions. She hugged the tiny pebble Steven had given to her on her last visit to her chest. He had identified it as a rock that had gone through one of the longest periods of weathering and had survived intact – and while the Champion failed to understand the scientific reasoning, she knew that the rock was one of a kind.

Flannery burst and she boiled and she roared, sending Phoebe back a few steps and Sid's guitar screeching unelegantly. She stamped her feet and voiced her frustrations (the time, the dreariness, the social life and lack thereof) and burned with a ferocity she forgot she had. She'd long lost the memory of how emotionally charged she could get, for the last time that had happened, Flannery had been locked in a fierce battle with the former champion. She'd cried and prayed and wished and shouted her heart out for her pokémon and – and where had all those emotions and meaningful instances gone? She frowned and realised that competitive battles had lost their spark for her with her current lifestyle.

When she calmed down, she slumped her shoulders and exhaled loudly. Her Elite Four parted to let her walk through, and they regarded her with different looks and fresh assumption, almost like newly found respect.

The first person she called up was Steven, whispering into the receiver as if telling a dire secret.

"I did it."

"I knew you could."

* * *

Drake finally allowed her to have off-days and dates. And while Phoebe and Sid cheered her on in an embarrassing way, Glacia curtly reminded her not to get caught up in fairytale emotions in the spur of the moment.

* * *

"Shouldn't you be at the pokémon league?" was always the first thing Steven spoke after he invited her into his gym. Apart from that, Flannery found her trips to Lavaridge refreshing and otherworldly, it kept her from losing the small grasp she had on her sanity and reality in itself. The town reminded her of the wonder of society and the stunning beauty of nature in its untouched, most primitive form. She scarcely felt that she belonged rightfully in Lavaridge, rather than at the pokémon league with the automatic doors and the plastic smell of the air conditioning.

"I think you'd be more fitting as the champion." Flannery would sometimes say quite vacantly, as if pondering at the possibility of situations that would never occur. Steven had already stated that he wouldn't want to leave the town with all its natural beauty and sites to excavate the rarest, most beautiful rocks. She had smiled and touched his shoulder whenever he reasoned like that, and whenever they drifted into their own corner of the world, she felt safe and human. It could happen anywhere, and she liked to perch her cheek on her right hand as she slouched over a table of a small restaurant or a quaint cafe that was cosy and fitting in the little town.

"Really? I can't imagine myself being up there at the top," Steven chuckled politely in response (like he always did), staring over his cup of dark coffee and her strawberry fruit punch, gaze teasing her face and the eyes her large sunglasses concealed. Flannery nodded her head, feeling the weight of the shawl around her neck. Still, she couldn't get rid of the image of him wearing the champion's cloak and standing like a picturesque hero in the final room of the League. She closed her eyes and took in the scent of the thick spring air, and imagining Steven against the backdrop of the mountains didn't seem that odd as well. (So she quietly slipped herself beside him in that never-paradise.)

* * *

They sipped their drinks and held hands secretly under the table; and it almost felt as if she was just an awkward nineteen-year old in love.

* * *

**end**


End file.
